Cast and Repast
by Scribbler
Summary: [one shot] Amara can't decide whether she should go on vacation. She's been feeling really weird lately, and fears being away from home might do more harm than good. So what does she do? Consults the Nova Roman spirits, of course. [Cruise Control fic]


**Disclaimer: **They belong to me about as much as they did in 2004 when they were cancelled: which is to say they don't, otherwise they wouldn't have been.

**A/N:** Owes a lot to _Charmed to Death_ by Shirley Damsgaard, wherein I found all my rune research. I've tried to reconcile Amara's comic book origins with the vague semi-details we were given in Evo canon, which resulted in a combination of Nova Roman customs and modern Brazilian life (apparently where she's from in Evo). Interpret subtext as you wish.

**Continuity:** Set just prior to the episode _Cruise Control_.

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_**Cast and Repast**_

© Scribbler, February/March 2007.

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Standing out on her balcony, Amara regarded the Institute grounds. In the encroaching dark of evening she could see they were still pockmarked in places, but overall the contractors had evened out all the damage from the explosion. You could barely tell this used to be a smoking crater.

The newly rebuilt Institute didn't have _quite _the same feel as the old one – when she stood on the driveway she could feel the odd contours of the foundations under her feet, all mangled and with new metal layered on top. Metal came from ore, after all, and what was more connected with earth than ore? If she concentrated enough she could hear the struts and see their long journey from quarry to factory to back underground again, holding up the X-Men's home.

This new mansion had a sort of echoey feel, like she was hearing the old stories simultaneously with the new. The stone was _all_ too new; the memories accumulated in and around the old bricks and mortar had been lost. It saddened her. She'd enjoyed 'reading' the building sometimes to practise her abilities. It wasn't the same when the only stories on offer concerned builders whose moustaches itched and whose mortgages were due.

She felt the sudden change in air pressure and smelled the ozone. A storm was coming. You didn't need Ororo's powers to tell that. Amara went back inside and shut the French windows, then turned to the brazier usually kept in her closet. It was a dented old thing discovered in a New York junk shop that time she and Rahne went with Jubilee to visit her foster parents. It was too bulky to live outside the closet, so mostly it stayed hidden under her winter coat, expect for times when she needed to use it – times like this.

Amara hadn't _given up_ the old ways when she came to America, but she had fallen out of childhood habits. She prayed every night, crushed eggshells at the breakfast table, and did other things that sometimes made the other kids look at her funny, but she was nowhere near as devout as Daddy or his friends. Once or twice she'd tried to explain to the others about her home and her people, but the idea of practising the old ways in the middle of suburbia confused them. Few at the Institute were religious, and even fewer knew about the Roman pantheon beyond what they learned in elementary history classes. Jupiter was some old dude on a cloud who turned into swans and junk, not someone whose statue sat in the Sanctuary in her sitting room back home.

Amara lit the herbs in the brazier, shut off the lights and sat cross-legged on her bed. Breathing deeply, she made her silent apologies and worked on clearing her mind.

It was relatively easy. Jean was always talking about the importance of mental clarity when dealing with fireballs and molten lava. The trick was _maintaining _that clarity when your hair was on fire and you could feel the earth pulsing like a heart underneath you. _That_ Amara had problems with – along with the collateral damage that followed when she lost focus.

Okay, okay, time to make with that focusing. Focussing sharpened the mind. So focus. Focus!

With great effort Amara tamped down her fizzing emotions, taking an extra moment to chase her dread into a box and shove it onto a shelf at the very back of her mind. She could still feel them underneath her false calm, but spun her brain on its proverbial heel so she wasn't looking at them. She just needed to maintain her concentration until she'd asked her question, she told herself. She could do that. Easy.

Daddy and Grandma could ask tens of questions. Amara could just about manage one before her emotions leaked in and she lost too much focus to read the runes correctly. Runes were tricky things – let your emotions influence you and you drew what you wanted to see, not the real truth.

_Is going on this cruise a bad idea?_

She'd been having so many problems with her powers lately – accidents; feeling the planet even outside training; that weird sense inside her, like something was swelling and pressing against her lungs and kidneys. Jean had tried to help, and so had the Professor. Ray made gags about trapped gas when Mr. McCoy ran tests on her that found heightened hormone levels. He recommended Agnus Castus and Evening Primrose Oil, which she took, but still she felt so … so _full_ all the time, as though she'd swallowed a deflated ball only to have it intermittently expand in her stomach.

_Is going on this cruise a bad idea?_

Amara reached into the pouch and drew out a small, oddly-shaped pebble. After placing it facedown on the bed in front of her she repeated the action twice more, each time repeating her question.

_Is going on this cruise a bad idea?_

_Is going on this cruise a bad idea?_

When all three pebbles had been drawn she slowly turned over in turn and looked at their little painted signs, which looked like a cross between Chinese calligraphy and Wingdings font. She turned her head, shrewdly examining the first symbol from several angles.

Then she gave up trying to look shrewd and scrabbled for the battered old book on her nightstand. Apparently she didn't remember enough of Daddy's teachings to do this without her grandmother's notes.

Amara had been very young when Grandma died, but she'd heard stories from everyone who knew her – which was most of the village. Girosal Aquilla had been a wise woman beyond compare, dispensing advice and help to the zealously private villagers well into her twilight years. Amara held tight to a memory of a woman so crippled with arthritis she couldn't even get out of her chair, who stared down at her with rheumy eyes that still danced with intelligence. She'd been about six at the time, leaning on the woman's skirts with the feel of thick knuckles running over her hair. Girosal had many talents, but had been especially expert at casting runes to foretell the future and read portents about luck and fate and all the stuff the other Institute kids claimed not to believe in.

"You make your own luck," Jubilee once said to Amara; which was obviously why she'd been sent back to New York when she wanted so much to stay. You made your own luck, and Jubilee was as bad at that as Amara was at remembering her lessons.

Maybe Girosal's talents weren't magical or spiritual at all. Maybe she'd been a mutant, like her granddaughter. The idea wasn't unappealing.

Amara refocused on the task at hand. Right, so the first rune was Laguz. "Law-gooze." She enunciated it slowly, eyes flicking across her grandmother's spidery handwriting.

_Laguz – represents water; calm surface with hidden mystery lying beneath; secrets; stormy sea. A rune indicating upheaval, obstruction, or possible loss. _

The first rune represented the present. Amara knew this. This was the simplest of all castings: basic herbs for meditation, three runes and one question. It wasn't the best method, nor the clearest. The potential meanings were incalculable, the possibility for misinterpretation vast.

Laguz indicated … mystery? Well, she definitely had a mystery going on. What the heck was up with her powers, and how could she feel normal again? She hated this weird bloating. It was worse than when Rahne made her eat Rumbledethumps with extra cabbage and onion.

The second rune represented advice given by the spirits. Nova Roman custom invested a lot in ancestors and their advice. The book identified Amara's rune as Thurisaz. "Thoor-ee-saw," she said. "Oh great."

_Thurisaz – giant, troll, demon, torturer of women, said to be used to evoke those from the underworld. A rune indicating challenges and tests. _

She was facing a challenge, she knew, but according to this the cruise she'd kept so firmly in her mind while casting was where the challenge was going to turn into a test. Her problems were coming to a head and … what was she supposed to do?

Oh, man. Amara swallowed a sudden lump in her throat and tamped down her dread again. She just had to keep it together until she'd figured out the third rune. The third rune was what would happen if she followed the advice of Thurisaz – woolly though it was. What sort of advice could a giant-troll-demon who tortured women give?

_Nothing good. Oh, man_.

Wunjo. The third rune was Wunjo. "Woon-yo."

Wunjo as a third rune in this sort of context, with these preceding portents, was at the very back of the book. On the last few pages Grandma's writing was pure chickenscratch. Her hands had been so curled and clawed with age by then she could barely hold a pen, but she'd refused to let anyone scribe for her. This book was her legacy, so personal that she refused to let anyone see it until after her death. Daddy had kept it in the sanctuary until the day Amara left for America, when he'd reverently taken both it and Girosal's runes out of their cabinet and given them to her.

"So you don't forget the old ways," he'd said when pressed.

_Wunjo – peace; prosperity; a hard battle well fought and won; partnership flourishes. A rune indicating union, new ties, beginnings and endings._

That didn't sound too bad. Fought and won. Winning was good. Winning was better than good. Winning meant she might actually figure out what was wrong with her and fix it. Of course, that was after challenges and tests and battles.

So if she went on this cruise, the runes said she'd figure out this problem with her powers and get past it. But if she went on this cruise, the runes said she'd face off against something from the underworld. Grandma's book said not to take the notes at face value, to think outside the box, so it probably wasn't talking about the actual _Underworld_, but something representational. Underground, perhaps? I'd make sense, given her powers. Yet there were so _many_ possibilities. What could she interpret from something like that?

Her head was starting to hurt, so the knock at the door went right through her skull. Amara slid off her bed and opened the door on Tabitha's wide grin. The grin dissolved, however, as a blast of burning herb scent hit her in the face.

"Aw, man, 'Mara. Who cut the cheese?"

"Sorry." Amara fled to open the French windows. Instantly the warm air of the room was sucked out, and she began to feel a little better.

"You're not doing drugs, are you? I don't see a bong, but you never know."

She blinked, aghast. "No!"

"Thought not. You're too goody-goody." It wasn't said maliciously, and actually sounded a bit like a compliment. Tabitha wiggled her perfectly plucked eyebrows and leaned on the doorframe. If she thought it was odd for Amara to be sitting in a sealed room with a brazier of burning herbs, she made no comment. "So, I'm hungry and totally in the groove for some Triple PP. You want in?"

"Triple … PP?"

"Pepperoni, pineapple and green pepper pizza. I have keeeeys." She dangled a set of car keys that looked suspiciously like those of Scott's convertible.

"Do you have permission?"

"Do preoccupied grunts count as permission?"

Amara couldn't help but smile. Life was so much more colourful when Tabitha was around. It made her wish the other girl would move back in permanently, instead of just until the cruise was over. "I don't think so."

"Meh." Tabitha shrugged. "He was stacking books with Jean. A real fun evening planned. What's he need a car for? So, I have wheels and a powerful need for carbs smothered in protein and e-numbers. Wanna join me?"

"You make it sound so inviting." It took Amara a fraction of a second to make her decision. "Sure. Just let me clean up."

"What've you been doing, anyhow?"

"Just … religious stuff." It was easier to be honest with Tabitha. Amara was a terrible liar, and Tabitha had spent most of her childhood poking holes in her father's stories of 'sure things' and her mother's 'I only drink at mealtimes'. She could spot a lie from a mile away.

"Really? Cool. Hey, I'll go on ahead to warm up the engine so we can make a quick getaway if Scottie realises his back pocket's a little light."

"You lifted them from his _pocket_?"

In answer, Tabitha just grinned some more and disappeared down the hall.

Amara quickly cleared away the brazier, setting it out on the balcony to cool down so it wouldn't tip over and set fire to her room while she was out. Yet she paused when scooping the cast runes back into their pouch.

She stared down at Laguz, Thurisaz and Wunjo with a horrible sinking feeling. It looked like she was going on the cruise if she wanted resolution. She just hoped she was strong enough to face whatever she found there.

Still, she'd survived being blown up, shot at, car chases, invisible planes, plastic helicopters, the Danger Room, collapsing bridges, mobsters, chops shops, evil psychics, had wrenches swung at her head, been spat at, looked down on, sneered at, flown halfway across the world away from everyone and everything she'd ever loved, and she'd survived it all. Surely she could handle one more challenge.

Outside on the driveway a pair of headlights hove into view. Tabitha papped the horn, which was Amara's cue to move it or lose it. It also signalled Tabitha's game of seeing who made it out to her first: Amara or Scott.

_Tabitha will help me_, Amara thought, suddenly reassured. Tabitha was irresponsible and outlandish and mischievous, but she'd do anything for a friend. Even back home, where she knew every other kid in the village, she'd never met anyone with the same kind of (admittedly warped) dependability. Even Thurisaz would have a hard time against the irresistible force that was Tabitha Smith.

Hastily drawing the string tight on the rune pouch, Amara cannoned downstairs and outside. When she passed the library she heard Scott's voice rumbling from the top of a ladder, Jean's placatory one beneath. She also heard clattering footsteps as he descended the ladder faster than his own feet.

She ran faster and actually hopped over the door of the convertible into the passenger seat. The hood was down even though the sky promised rain. It was the kind of crazy thing you came to expect from Tabitha, who whooped and gunned the engine, sending cool wind rushing through their hair.

Amara whooped too, even though she knew they'd be in such trouble for this when they got home.

But for this evening, at least, she was just like any other teenager girl, free of challenges and tests that would shape who she was for the rest of her life.

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_**Fin.**_

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End file.
